Written by The Banking Post
As part of the country’s foreign exchange (forex) market stabilisation moves, the Bangladesh Bank’s (BB) dollar netting from commercial banks reached almost a billion-mark in less than two months.
With the latest interventions of buying $47.50 million more through auctions from the interbank spot market on Tuesday, the central bank has so far been bought $995.50 million since July 13 last under the prevailing free-floating exchange rate arrangement.
Bankers and money market analysts said the US-dollar purchasing moves of the banking regulator is not only helping keep dollar-taka exchange rate stable but also contributing to make its foreign exchange reserve as stronger as possible even after repayment of the upcoming ACU (Asian Clearing Union) liabilities of $1.50 billion.
Simultaneously, the US dollar-sourcing activities also facilitate the banks mitigate their local currency obligations as the central bank injects over Tk 121 billion in the form of procuring the US currency, according to the BB sources.
Seeking anonymity, a BB official said they have bought $47.50 million on Tuesday under the Multiple Price Auction method and the cutoff was Tk 121.75 per American greenback.
The official said the forex deals on the interbank spot market have been slowed in recent days because of lower demand for foreign currencies against supply surge.
And it slowed down the commercial bank’s forex-netting drives because they were unable to sell their already-sourced dollars on the market amid low demand, the official said.
“That’s why the BB came to intervene and it would help the lenders source more forex using the liquidity it injected into the banks through such purchase,” the central banker said.
On condition of not disclosing identity, another BB official said the government is set to clear ACU liabilities amounting to $1.50 billion by end of this week. “Despite such large payment, we’re expecting that the gross reserve will stay over $30 billion-mark,” according to the official.
According to BB data, the country’s forex reserves rose to $31.39 billion as of September 2, 2025 from $31.19 billion recorded on August 28 last. By end of July, 2025, the figure was $29.80 billion.
Because of the BB’s forex market intervention, the Bangladesh forex (foreign exchnage) market reference rate reversed into the upward trend after days of downturn. According to the official data, the dollar-taka reference rate was Tk 121.68 per dollar on August 28 last. Since then it started moving up riding on BB’s dollar-buying drives to Tk 121.86 per dollar on September 2, 2025.
